Google Apps

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I remember when Howard & Gus were talking up Gmail when it came out. A gig of storage for life free they said. It was a closed beta so you had to have friends who had an in get you an invite. In a short period of time (shorter than I expected) I had an invite. I was like why do I need this? I want and use my own domain’s personal email. Why would I want @gmail.com in my address? I mean the idea was very interesting but I didn’t think it was for me.

Not too much time went by and people were still talking about Gmail. I figured I need to use my invite so I can at least secure the username that I like to use, so I did. As predicted I haven’t used Gmail that much. I do route mail to it that I don’t want in my regular mailbox’s, but I could go weeks without logging into the account. That was until a month or so ago.

Recently Google offered Google Apps for free. Google Apps is a collection of web applications that you can use with your own domain. They have cool features like Google Talk, Calendar, etc. What got me interested was Gmail. Now they offer a Gmail front end that you can use for your own mail domain. Better yet it is free for personal use. I get 100 accounts with as of this writing 5.8 gigs of space. Now this information on its own would be interesting but nothing more. In fact when I first read about Google Apps I setup a mail domain pointing to the system and played around with it, but nothing more. I like to get my mail via IMAP, and Google didn’t offer that. The final clincher for me was when they announced that Google Apps would support IMAP, also for free. For the past week I have been routing some mail to my domain I had them hosting mail for, and so far I haven’t had any hiccups (fingers crossed). Because of that I am beginning the task of routing all my mail to Google Apps.

I can be a cynic. I know that, but I am very impressed by how this tool has evolved. I am even eying the Premier version of the service to get some of the more advanced features. I am not sure if I need them so the free service is fine for now. It is just too bad that I wasted some money moving to a new email hosting provider in September. They are great, but they can’t compete with 5gigs free IMAP storage.

10.5 Compatible Applications Follow Up

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When I first installed Leapord (OS 10.5) I wrote about the compatibility issues I had with some programs that I use. Well it has been almost two months and allot of those issues are resolved with one or two still lingering.

I found out that the ecto beta for 3.0 is a free upgrade for me since I owned 2.x. So far 3.0 is working fine in beta and thankfully isn’t crashing so I can write this blog entry without aggravation.

Mark/Space has published a beta of the Missing Sync for the Palm that works with 10.5. I had issues with it like I did with the original version of 6.x. It stops syncing tasks and calendar items from my Treo. Thankfully since I wrote the first post and now I have switched phones to a Symbian based Nokia E61i so I don’t need to rely on this software.

PGP Desktop may be the de facto standard in security products but it is not cheap ($70 or so for 1 year). Add the fact that they didn’t have a working product (even in beta) when 10.5 came out I began looking for other products. I have looked into Knox several times before I went with PGP Desktop, but now I took another look at the product that is basically an add on to Apple’s DMG file format. Knox gives me all the functionality I want, plus added features that a simple encrypted DMG file does not. I gave the trial a go and already bought myself a license (only $34.95 for a license not a one year subscription). I have let my PGP subscription expire and so far I am happy with my choice. Converting the encrypted stores I had took some time but I think I am finally done.

Mactheripper is a totally different story that I wont go into now. I don’t want to write that much.

Marketcircle has had several beta’s of Daylite 3.6 out. Their latest still has sync problems with Apple Sync services. They have been very responsive so I am patient for now. I can use the program but I can’t use alarms, or I can’t sync it with my phone. This is probably the most frustrating issue i have right now.

Other than that I have not had many issues with Leopard. I am not using all the new features that I thought I would, but overall it is a great OS.

More Shopping Today

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Today I took it easy in the morning and then headed out to the Queens Center Mall. The nasty weather didn’t really deter me. It wasn’t really raining/snowing that much by the time I left my apartment. I meet up with Jayson for some light shopping. I ended up not getting much but we found our way to the Outback for some lunch and hung out for a bit. Nice light fare for my vacation!

Saturday Shopping

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Today I braved the cold weather and headed into Manhattan for some shopping. My main goal was to get a pair of new glasses. I have a relatively new pair (a year and a half old) but I wasn’t super happy with the way they looked. They were narrow lenses that seem to be the only major stye you can find in eye glasses. The problem with that is that I have Nystagmus, so even if I am not trying to my eyes would sometimes view an area of my view that was not covered by the glasses. Needless to say this is annoying. I got used to it for the most part but it came up now and again.

I wanted to find a pair of decent pair of round frames like I had previously had. When I got my old pair I couldn’t find a pair of round ones that fit right to replace the old pair I had, so I tried the narrow oval style instead. This time around I was able to find a nice light pair of round frames that covered my field of view so even with the Nystagmus I don’t have an issue.

While the glasses were being made at Lenscrafters I took a trip to the new Apple Store on 14th street. That was a mistake. I didn’t realize it was on 9th ave. For some reason I thought 8th, so it was a really long walk in the freezing cold. I did get a pair of Bose in ear headphones for my iPod Classic. I tried Jayson’s pair and knew in a minute that they were a good buy! I finally got fed up with the Apple ones that came with my iPod that I have been suffering with for years.

After getting my glasses I meet up with Danny in Union Square and went to Dukes for some dinner and drinks. It was a freezing experience, but overall a great day!

Vacation to Nowhere

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I tried to make today as eventless as possible. It was my last day at work before my vacation. I didn’t need any excitement to delay my rest. Thankfully I had good mojo or something since nothing crazy happened like earlier in the week.

I hit the local bar everyone from work goes to for a quick drink before my vacation began. I am off for 11 days counting weekends and the christmas holiday. I am not really going anywhere, but I needed to take some time off. I haven’t been on a vacation since my Cancun trip in 2005. For this vacation I couldn’t think of where to go and couldn’t find any travel companion’s so I just decided to take time off and relax. The second half of the week I am going to my sisters in New Jersey to see her and the kids and to babysit one night. So that will break up the vacation a bit.

Even though I am not going anywhere I am not going to contact work. That means my Blackberry is off, I have the away message in my email client running, and I told everyone in my group I would only answer the phone for them and only if it was during certain times of the day. I need some time to relax. Lets see how that goes!

Lunchtime

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Today I took a nice lunch break to go down to Dukes and meet up with Dan for lunch. It has been too long since I saw him so I wanted to get together. He was still decompressing from leaving his last job (aka the company that I left back in February). It was interesting to get his insight into what is currently going on there. Like me, he was in need of a change.

It was nice to catch up. I am trying to get everyone together that used to play poker for a game at my place after the new year once I get furniture. Dan also offered to host a game or two.

I had to cut our lunch short (well short is a relative term) since I had been gone for almost two hours so I needed to get back to the office. I don’t take lunch almost ever so it wasn’t a big deal but I had allot to do since I am on vacation next week.

Lunch with Danny & Jayson

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Today I was able to get away from the office for about an hour to have lunch with Jayson & Danny. We just hit a dinner, but it was good to get out of the office and sit down for a change. Otherwise a relatively (for me) uneventful day.

Custom VOIP

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I don’t know why I take on projects that suck up my free time that I probably don’t need to be involved in, but I do. This weekend I began tinkering with a Cisco 7940 phone I have trying to get a Gizmo Project SIP account to work on it. I spent a few hours on Saturday working on it.

First I had to remember how to upgrade the firmware on the 7940. It has been a while since I tinkered with these phones. I realized that when the downloaded firmware I had was 6.03 or something and the latest availible is 8.8. I had to break out the old TFTP server and remember all the files I needed to get the upgrade to work. Cisco has documentation on the process but it is not so easy to follow. After getting the firmware flashed I had to sift through google search results trying to find someone who has posted a working config for a Gizmo Project account working on the Cisco 7940 IP Phone. I found one config and a few references to settings but not much else. The config I found isn’t working correctly. I have tweaked it significantly and I still can’t get a call to complete. I can get dial tone, but that just means some sort of signaling is working. I am so close, but for some reason I can’t get calls to connect!

I am about to give up on getting Gizmo working directly on the 7940, and instead try to get Tribox or some other Asterisk setup working. Unfortunately the Tribox VM i downloaded last year is a year old and I am having problems getting the latest one up and running. I may be putting this on hold for a while. I am going to also ask for some help from one of the network guys at work who used to work for a VOIP provider.

Crazy Tech Buying & Selling Spree

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I don’t know what it is about the past few weeks but I have been on a crazy buying and selling spree. I have finally gotten rid of my old 60gig iPod. I have had my new 160gig silver one for a while but after a few problems with eBay I never actually sold the old one. I finally put it up on Craigslist and sold it. Even with my new Nokia 6120 Classic, I have been going back and forth with that phone and my Treo 680. The 6120 is great but I realized I need a phone with a keyboard. I think a phone is not a smartphone without one!

Going back to the Treo wasn’t going to work for the long term so after a false start I ended up picking up a new Nokia E61i off of Craigslist. It is big, but so far is doing everything i need it to. And it has Wifi to boot. I am still getting used to the Symbian OS, and the different applications I need to get to work. I already don’t like the PIM (Address book, Calendar, & Tasks) functions, but that is a trade off for not crashing and a phone that generally does what it is supposed to do. Stability has become important to me more so in recent days. More discussions on the E61i as I continue to play with it.

I am going to keep the N810 tablet because it is just interesting if anything. I don’t need it for any real reason but I am enjoying tinkering with it.

I am also in the process of cleaning out my closet and finally selling the extra DVD player I have (it is new in the box) and my old Tivo. I probably have a bunch of other stuff lying around so I have will be busy for a while.

I guess this is a good time to be doing all of this anyway with the holidays coming up and all.

Nokia N810

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The N810 finally came out late last week. I was actually very lucky and found a reseller in downtown Manhattan that had them in stock. I picked on up and have been playing with it for about a week. It is a really interesting device. I am finding that I am not going to use it for what I originally planned (as a PDA/Internet tablet to complement a normal mobile phone) but I still like it just the same.

The Palm VM on it is really cool. I have been playing with that for a while. I am getting addicted to mine sweaper again. Email, Chat and browsing on the tablet is cool also. I also think that Skype & Gizmo on it are amazing. You can barely tell that I am on speakerphone when using Skype on it. I did an entire conference call on speaker using skype and wifi. It was really cool.

I am waiting to see what other applications get ported over to the Maemo 2008 OS.

NYTimes.com

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